About Me

Hi! I’m William “Lee” Dubois (called either Wil or Lee, depending what part of the internet you’re on). I’m a diabetes columnist and the author of four books about diabetes that have collectively won 16 national and international book awards. (Hey, if you can’t brag about yourself on your own blog, where can you??) I have the great good fortune to pen the edgy Dear Abby-style advice column every Saturday at Diabetes Mine; write the Diabetes Simplified column for dLife; and am one of the ShareCare diabetes experts. My work also appears in Diabetic Living and Diabetes Self-Management magazines. In addition to writing, I’ve spent the last half-dozen years running the diabetes education program for a rural non-profit clinic in the mountains of New Mexico. Don’t worry, I’ll get some rest after the cure. LifeAfterDx is my personal home base, where I get to say what and how I feel about diabetes and… you know… life, free from the red pens of editors (all of whom I adore, of course!).

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Thursday, May 03, 2007

Pumping 104

I don’t know why I’ve taken so long to talk more about one of the best, most revolutionary, make-your-life-worth-living aspects of the new ParaPump system. Oh wait. I do know. It is because it works soooooooooooo well I never give it a second thought. It is so out of sight it is out of my mind. It is so comfortable it forget I’m even wearing it.

Compared to its predecessors, it is nano technology. It is the sparrow descended from the T-Rex. It is the sexy, aerodynamic airplane of the future compared to the clunky C-47 transport our grandfathers used. It is the MiniLink Transmitter. (Honestly, who names these things? MedT should stick to making great medical devices and ask diabetics for help naming their products. I bet their ad agency doesn’t have a single member of our tribe working for them.)

Poor name aside, this is awesome technology. I’ll put my poor over-taxed brain on coming up with a new name later. But for now we’ll call it Mini.

Well, first, I need to point out that Mini is not blue. But its recharger is. Sigh. Mini is white. Well, maybe cream colored. I would have gone for silver. Or clear. Or clear-greyish-purple to match the sensor it snaps to. Or flesh tone. Ah-ha! But whose flesh, you ask? Well, fair question. But none of us are cream colored. Except albinos. I’m betting there aren’t too many T-1 diabetic albinos. For those few of you out there, you’re gonna love the color of this transmitter. Maybe the engineers figured it would be covered with tape of some sort. Actually, tape is optional. That said, I’m superstitious and I’ve been putting an IV-3000 dressing over mine to hold everything securely in place. The transmitter does not have any sort of sticky pad like the old one. It just clips to the sensor, which does have some tape on it. Of course, the IV-3000 is clear.

So back to skin color. I vote for the color of Chinese skin. After all, there are more of them than any other kind of folk, right? A nice warm tan color looks better on white skin than cream-colored. Would more or less match Asians, Indians, and Hispanics. Would still be better than cream colored on Africans and African Americans.

But that’s honestly the only negative thing I can say about it. It could be blaze orange or neon pink and I would still love it. And you’ll love it too.

It is small, light, and curvy. Your underwear will not stick to it. It will not wake you up when you toss in your sleep. You can wear your red leather disco pants and no one will ask if you have a transmitter in your pocket or are you just glad to see them.

On top of all that, it works better. I rarely lose signal. Much more rarely than with the old transmitter. And did I mention that it is rechargeable? And what a cool little re-charger too. Like those save-your-ass emergency cell phone re-chargers it takes a common, humble AAA battery. You just slip the mini into the re-charger and a few hours buys you days, and days, and days… I’ve never run it down yet, and I’ve just been giving it little toots of power between sensors.

The transmitter is incredible. It--along with the generally very fine and accurate sensor that it plugs into--will make CGM a realistic technology that diabetes big and small will truly embrace.

There is competition on the horizon for MedT sensors, but assuming (with no evidence yet) that the sensors themselves share the same level of accuracy, this transmitter will cause MedT to win the race. I would rather wear a small transmitter and live with the various “issues” I have with the device than wear a larger transmitter and have a perfect device. I can say from experience wearing big transmitters and now a tiny one, David will triumph over Goliath once again.

3 Comments:

Anonymous said...

Will, I appreciate that you think this pump is the best think since sliced bread but to be honest my eyes started to glaze over after the firts few lines. Give us non-pumpers the facts in future anf forget about the attempts at Shakespearian proaze